List building outside safe swaps

Platform of what?

Like Autoresponders? Like click trackin on a squeeze page?

I think there are clickbanking groups on FB as well as solo ad testimonials. Whenever I buy or trade traffic I always use my own tracking link. I create a unique url for that campaign in hitsconnect. You can verify the IP addresses and see if they sent you people or bot server traffic

List swapping was a good way to build your list about 4 or 5 years ago.

It's basically only good for the "make money online/biz opp" niche, though, and most of the top autoresponders now consider this spamming and will shut your account down if you get caught doing it too often.

Also, the amount of people scamming and sending fake and cheap quality traffic has skyrocketed in the past 2-3 years. I stopped doing ad swaps 3 years ago and never looked back.

It used to be great when I first started doing it in 2011. People were honest and would deliver all clicks within 24 hours. Now people don't know the difference between ad swapping and "click banking," and it can take someone 5 days just to send you 50 clicks.

Also, I can understand why the autoresponder companies consider this spamming now. All you see now are shady practices like double (and sometimes triple) squeeze pages, using rotators in the email body, using bots to send fake traffic, and ridiculously spammy squeeze pages and email subject lines.

I wouldn't recommend ad swapping to anybody who is actually serious about building a long term sustainable email marketing business.

There is nothing wrong with being in the "biz opp/make money online" niche, as long as you are doing it right. I've been in this niche since 2008 and have achieved great success in it. However, you need to do it ethically, and not engage in all of the shortcuts and tactics that will do nothing more than ensure you lose your autoresponder accounts.

As if all of the above isn't bad enough, the leads are so watered down that your open and CTR rates will be in the toilet. You'll be lucky to achieve a 4% open rate and a 2% CTR.

I still remember the good old days when ad swapping worked well because the people doing it were on the level and not all newbs, punters, and generally inexperienced hacks like most of them are today.

There are so many easier and better ways to build your list that I don't see why ad swapping is something that you would want to do. It seems like an awful lot of risk for not much reward.

Also, and while I really have no solid proof of this, I have heard from many members and former members that there is a lot of shady things going on with Safe Swaps, such as legitimate clicks that somehow don't get counted and I've even heard of broadcasts going out to member's lists that they swear they didn't send.

My advice -- Ad swaps have gone the way of the dinosaur. Stay away from them because you'll only set yourself up for a lot of headaches.